Va. Beach's legal battle for beach access cost $1.7M

VIRGINIA BEACH

The city won a court victory last week establishing the public's right to use the beaches along the Chesapeake Bay. But it came at a price: more than $1.7 million.

That's how much the city has paid in legal fees to the Williams Mullen law firm in the past eight years to handle beach-access issues, mostly along the Bay.

The firm researched titles to determine who owned the properties, helped get public easements from the owners and defended the city last week against one of four owners who have argued that the beach is private. Williams Mullen hasn't yet submitted bills for the trial costs, including bringing in expert witnesses and flying in a retired city beach maintenance worker from Florida.

"It is a heck of a lot of money, but it is an extraordinarily important issue," said Councilman Jim Wood, whose district includes the Cape Henry beaches, which stretch from First Landing State Park to the Lesner Bridge. "I think what we got in terms of public ownership... was worth every penny."

Josh Baker, an attorney who represented 3232 Page Avenue Condominium, said the city wasted money and extended the cases longer than necessary.

"That's a lot of money that seems to me could have been used for a number of other needs in the city," Baker said.

The majority of the city's legal activities, from reviewing contracts to drafting ordinances, are handled by a team of staff attorneys. But when the staffers don't have experience with a particular issue or they can't devote the time to it, the city hires outside counsel, City Attorney Mark Stiles said.

For the Cape Henry beaches, most of the work was done by Don Clark, a Williams Mullen attorney. Clark, who charged the city $295 an hour, had worked on Oceanfront beach-access issues for Virginia Beach in the past and had the knowledge and resources to handle these cases, Stiles said.

Along Cape Henry, the ownership issues were particularly complex, he said.

The state sold the rights to those beaches in 1868 to settle the mounting debts of the Civil War, and tracing deeds over more than a century took extensive work, Stiles said.

But the city's two-prong approach also racked up costs, Baker said.

The city condemned the property in 2009 for a beach-replenishment project and offered owners money but then spent the past two years also arguing that the shoreline belongs to the public and taxpayers don't have to pay anything for it.

"It definitely would have been cheaper in time and cost," Baker said, if the city had just argued in court that the public owned the shoreline, which is what a circuit court judge determined last week.

The city condemned the property, because it faced a time crunch, Stiles said. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was ready to start the beach replenishment and would put sand on Cape Henry only if the property was public, Stiles said.

The city has always maintained that the beaches were public, Stiles said.

Still, the city is trying to reduce its outside attorney fees for the beach-easement cases, Stiles said.

Last year, the city and Clark agreed to a fixed cost for the work. And with the conclusion of last week's case, the city will cut back on using Williams Mullen, Stiles said.

In-house attorneys will handle the remaining three court cases involving Cape Henry condo owners, using Clark's framework, he said.

"I think we're in the position to deal with it with existing staff," Stiles said.

Deirdre Fernandes, (757) 222-5121, deirdre.fernandes@pilotonline.com